Make-able Challenge

Our final project in Product Design II was the Make-able Challenge. The make-able challenge is a challenge to help someone with a disability using 3D printing. We unfortunately didn't know anyone we could directly help with the challenge though, so we chose Michelle from the pre-made list of people in need. My group got together to sketch up and discuss ideas based on her needs and had multiple ideas that would help. 

Our ideas consisted of 3 things: a table with and adjustable incline, as research shows that sometimes writing at an incline can be easier and take less effort than writing flat. The other idea was something you could attach to your finger to let you write pointing, as Michelle said something like this would help her. Finally the last idea was a thick mechanical pencil. Michelle said that she was more comfortable with bigger pencils but says she presses hard when writing, meaning once in a while the lead or pencil breaks. To make sure the pencil lead didn't easily break, we'd need to make a new mechanical pencil using much thicker lead that won't break under pressure.

Since we were a group, we were able to split up each of these tasks among ourselves to tackle as many of Michelle's issues as we could. I personally took on the mechanical pencil challenge.

A mechanical pencil is a very difficult thing to make, it has pretty complex mechanical properties that I had to figure out how to scale up and make work with the large 3.2mm lead we would be using. I learned how mechanical pencils work by taking apart mine and analyzing the components, which were each surprisingly simple. The green component was the most mechanically complex part as its supposed to rest in a grabbing position but release the lead as it moves up. It also had to be able to be inserted into the assembly but not taken out. Luckily, the quality and mechanical properties of the Stratasys J55 3D printer allowed me to produce a part that would function mostly as intended.